The dramatic events at Spitsbergen during the whaling season of June and July 1618 and at the Island of Pola Run (‘Polaroone’) in the Spice Islands from 1616-18 described in these two accounts were the culmination of six years of increasingly fractious relations between English and Dutch merchants and sailors as both nations attempted to secure commercial advantage under the cover of early colonial expansion. The consequences were far-reaching and would culminate half a century later with the English acquisition of Manhattan Island from the Dutch.
When news of the events described here arrived in England it caused outrage and almost brought the country to war with the Dutch. The newsletter-writer John Chamberlain wrote to Sir Dudley Carleton, Ambassador at The Hague, on 13 August 1618 of, “lowde speach of yll measure offered by the Hollanders to our people both in the East Indies and in Gronland. Yf matters be so fowle as they are made, yt wilbe hard to reconcile them, and in the mean time yt breeds yll bloude.” (The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. Norman E. McClure (Philadelphia, 1939), Vol. II, p. 166. Detailed accounts of the events on Spitsbergen and in the East Indies were later published in through original letters and documents by Samuel Purchas in Purchas his Pilgrimes (London, 1625), Book IV, Chapter 8 (Spitsbergen), and Book V, Chapter 3 (East Indies).
Of the present documents, one a direct appeal to King James from the Muscovy Company, and the other a direct appeal to King James from the East India company, both otherwise apparently known only in copies in the National Archives; the first is unpublished apart from one paragraph.
In combination, these two accounts of Dutch outrages at opposite ends of the earth became part of a process that led to a negotiated settlement with Dutch promises of reparation to the two English Companies. However, these promises would remain unfulfilled until 1667 when it was agreed in the Treaty of Breda that England would surrender its historic claim to the island of Pola Run in return for the island of Manhattan and the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam, soon to be renamed New York.
A lengthy description is available upon request.
